The Lodge received the following update from Attorney Krislov regarding the August 9th court appearance:

Dear Retirees,

Wednesday’s hearing was a pretty frustrating experience. We presented five issues, on which we felt fairly confident.

1. Our renewed motion for Class Certification.

2. The judge’s choice of orders to enter for the March hearing at which he ordered audit and reconciliation of the 2013 to 2016 years.

3. The City’s assertion that he lacks jurisdiction over the post-2013 reconciliations.

4. The Funds’ report on the actions to fulfill their obligations to provide health care coverage for the annuitants for 2018.

5. The City’s report on the progress in the audit and reconciliation process.

After about two hours of hearing, attended by perhaps 40 of you, Judge Cohen finally ruled that he instead has no jurisdiction over the post-2013 reconciliations, yet he has set September 14 as the next status for the city to report on the 2014-2016 reconciliation process timetable.

Denied class certification again, preferring to await rulings on the merits if the Supreme Court takes our appeal. The transcript should be out by the end of the week, we hope, and we’ll post it.

I do not believe that we can expect judge Cohen to follow through on actually ordering the city or the Funds to comply with any of their obligations, unless he is ordered to do so by the appellate court.

Accordingly, we will put our efforts into our Petition to the Illinois Supreme Court, which is due September 7, and we may try to get the class certification and jurisdiction issues up there as well.

It will be a challenging but important month ahead. Your contributions are invited and welcome.